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This question has fascinated me for a long time. Until recently, I didn’t recognize myself as a healer. I felt I was a teacher, a yogi, a writer, and a thinker. What I most like to think about, write about, and teach are those practices and perspectives that help people make sense of what never fit together before, help us connect more deeply to ourselves, and help us to find resolution of the physical, emotional, psychological, and relational patterns that keep us stuck in suffering and struggle. In other words, I’ve always been fascinated with what heals us.

This passion has been fueled by my desire for my own healing, both physical and psychological. I’ve always had the sense that we were meant to thrive, but I knew I wasn’t thriving, and, looking around, it didn’t seem like many others were either. I’ve always wanted to understand why we get so stuck, and why our best efforts to move beyond self-sabotaging habits and patterns of insecurity rarely succeed.

In the course of my personal quest for healing, I turned into a self-improvement junkie. I became more and more eager to “fix” myself… which didn’t work very well. I succeeded at changing some of my unsupportive habits through willpower, but the changes either didn’t last or didn’t “fix” the way I felt, emotionally and physically. Eventually I realized I was creating internal opposition, pitting one part of myself against another in my attempt to create harmony, and that I was approaching my self-improvement project from the deep wound of feeling like there was something inherently wrong with me.

I had already spent some years improving my self-talk – learning that the idea that I was somehow deficient was misguided and mistaken, and replacing that story of myself with a healthier one. It took practice, but I really did learn to trust the new story – that I was actually okay, as is. It helped, but the feelings of inadequacy and insecurity were still there; they just came to the surface less frequently. When they did, they felt just like they always did — devastating. I could think wiser, more respectful thoughts but they didn’t seem to penetrate to the deepest layers of my felt sense of self. I still felt deficient, when it came down to it. Like I couldn’t relax fully in my own skin. I had to try, to do something, to be someone. It didn’t feel safe to just be.

This recognition has been healing in itself. In realizing that there is this very tender, core experience of not feeling safe to just be, I found compassion for myself, and have been able to make space for those feelings to arise and to flow freely when they do. I have invited them to arise, learning to trust the intelligence of the healing process’s impeccable timing. When they do, it is often a very physical experience as well as an emotional one. I sense that in presencing these aspects of my experience I am learning how to relax, in a way I never knew was possible. Sometimes there is simply an innocent sobbing and shaking. Sometimes I receive insights that help me to make peace with my historical struggles, help me to grow in wisdom and glimpse the big picture. Sometimes I have felt streams of energy pouring into my body; I sense these energies as vibrations or frequencies of Self that I had become cut off from – in this lifetime and perhaps in many lifetimes – and to which I am now choosing to reclaim access. I’ve realized that I have called in my own healing, and in doing so, I have become a healer.

I’ve come to see how healing is a process of unwinding back through the layers of our conditioning, and that in order to bring resolution to our earliest experiences of wounding and all the subsequent layers of trauma, suffering, mistaken identity, and misunderstanding, we need to be willing and able to receive healing into all layers of being – spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, and energetic. It’s about recognizing that there is nothing wrong with us, and there never was anything wrong with us, and opening ourselves to the process of coming into alignment with that truth, on all levels.

For me, this is what healing is at the core – Self-love. It is about bringing love in wherever it is needed, wherever the sensations, emotions, thoughts, and patterns of unworthiness and inadequacy hold court.

Healing ourselves isn’t about self-improvement. The Self doesn’t need improvement. Healing is about recognizing that right down to our cells, and relaxing into the perfection of our unique expression of Being. It’s about becoming the source and the recipient of a ceaseless flow of unconditional self-love. It’s about becoming so sourced in the nourishment of that love that all habits of blaming yourself, judging yourself, and comparing yourself to others lose their power and eventually drop away. Healing, really, is about coming home to ourselves, for not only are we entirely deserving of love, this love is who we are.

Many of us find ourselves bouncing back and forth, sometimes pretty dramatically, between optimism and hopelessness. The symbolic wisdom of astrology helps us understand and navigate these powerful times of transition and transformation. What is happening? What does it all mean? What are we becoming?

Astrology and the cosmos can provide some insight into how we are changing and why. From my perspective as an evolutionary astrologer, I see the difficult and sometimes painful circumstances that we must confront as an important step in our learning and growth, both on personal and collective levels. The challenges we face are necessary to push us into taking greater responsibility for our circumstances.

We need to expand both our hearts and our minds to be able to handle the awareness of truths that are beginning to dawn on us. These truths include, but are not limited to, new discoveries being made by science about the nature of the universe, how our bodies work, and what is taking place at unseen dimensions. They include the necessity that we transcend war. And they include confronting the limitations of existence on a planet whose resources are being depleted as we speak.

The importance of us “getting” these lessons is no less than the fate of humanity and the planet. But there are powerful signs of real change. So many of us are awakening to the areas where we can no longer compromise personal empowerment, because personal empowerment is the source of hope. When you understand who you are, why you are here, and how you are here to make a difference, you can stand in your unique perspective and speak, act, and choose from the truth which comes from your essence – that which brings meaning and fulfillment to your life.

Here, in a nutshell, are the astrological “indicators” of change.

Transition to the Age of Aquarius

This is a long-term transitional period, not one that takes place in a single moment, or in a single year. It refers to the approximately 2000-year time period that constitutes an “age.” The age of Pisces began around the time of the beginning of Christianity. Ages refer to a gradual “slipping” of the zodiac which takes place when observed over long periods of time, or the position of the Sun in the zodiac through our seasons as compared with its position against the backdrop of remote stars.

Symbolically, the age of Pisces referred to giving up our power as individuals while depending upon a representation of the divine – generally an authority figure – to tell us what to do. In many cases this power was claimed in bloody and terrifying ways. We submitted to it because the alternative was to be outcast from the safety and protection of the collective culture and society. Conformity, and giving up individual needs and styles, was what ensured the survival and continuation of the community.

The age of Aquarius refers to us reclaiming our power as individuals as the center of divinity and power shifts from an external figurehead to an internal authority. As we make this shift, the evolutionary pressures placed upon us are to now give up the necessity of conformity and become our own centers of authority and decision-making. Each of us becomes a center of divine power with access to our own inherent truth and individual way of being.

This transition feels like a crisis because as we step into our inner authority and divinity, we must give up deep-seated beliefs that we will be tortured and killed for doing so. Each of us has our own version of this story, and each of us has our own suppressed inner voice to claim.

The Pluto-Uranus Square

In 2011, this long-term transit came within a degree of exact, causing us to feel the collective crisis and impetus for change. In astrology, a “square” means that two planets are 90 degrees apart in the zodiac (as they are viewed from Earth). Squares are felt as conflict, crisis, or pressure.

The square between these two planets is part of a cycle that began during the 1960s when the two planets were conjunct, or together in the zodiac (in Virgo). During the 1960s when Pluto, the planet of transformation, power, sex, and death met the planet of sudden change, individual expression, rebellion, and revolution humanity experienced a collective wave of awakening. Into existing power structures the archetypal truths of individual and sexual empowerment, social and environmental movements, substances that could instantly alter consciousness and perception, and cries for equal rights exploded like hot lava suddenly escaping from a long-dormant volcano.

The problem is, conjunctions are completely subjective. The energies emerge without knowing where to go, or what their ultimate purpose is. It is now our task, 50 years later, to decide what we are going to do with the energies that were unleashed during the 60s. We are under the extreme pressure of this square – stuck between a rock and a hard place – or between the reality we have created and the freedom we can imagine – and we are forced to choose what we are going to do about it. The Pluto-Uranus square will be in an exact 90-degree relationship a total of seven times between 2012 and 2015 (due to the fact that both planets are far away and move slowly, and also due to retrograde periods).

Outer Planet Placements in 2012-2015

Pluto: Pluto is in Capricorn. Pluto brings transformation and massive change to the sign of structure, tradition, and authority. It will continue to express itself through this venue, removing the security blanket of knowing what we can count on (financial systems? political structures? family structures?) and opening the doorway to rebirth. Pluto does not determine the nature of the rebirth. We do that.

Neptune: Neptune shifts into its home sign of Pisces early in 2012. Renewal comes through new ways of knowing the divine, and spirituality opens us to new levels of awareness and understanding. Escapism into altered states (virtual realities? vision quests on crack? giving our power away to illusions or false promises?) and other substitutes for knowing the infinite nature of divine source are the pitfalls we must avoid. On the positive side, infinite potential and divine love become real and accessible.

Uranus: Uranus is in Aries. Uranus is the planet of individuality, rebellion, and authentic expression. It is taking us through the journey of Aries: the sign of pure essential being. We must be the Aries warrior and fight for what we believe in, for what our inner authority knows to be right. We must also be the divine fool and not be afraid to make mistakes. Aries is the sign of action without thought, of new life as it strives to understand what it means to exist. Without movement, without trying, without risk – we will die inside.

So, in a nutshell, we are creating a new world. What will this new world look like? We are deciding. We are deciding right now and in every moment. Our choices determine our future.

The universe is asking: will you speak, act, and choose out of fear and the limitations of the past? Or will you honor your past choices while giving yourself permission to choose differently?

Will you choose from the heart? From the truth? From courage? Are you willing to stand up and create a new future that is based not in what you know, but what you can imagine?

By knowing yourself, you can make choices that emerge from who you are, and not what you are trying to protect yourself from. I suspect that as we grapple with who we really are, doorways will open to an incredible future.